This paper reports the preliminary results of an acoustic study of
preaspiration in the Gaelic of North Argyll. Existing descriptions
identify this area as reflecting Old Irish and Old Norse ‘voiceless’
geminates as [xp xt xk] clusters (‘pre-affricates’), but, to our
knowledge, no targeted acoustic study of these varieties had been
performed to date. Our results confirm that the preaspiration found in
other varieties corresponds to dorsal (velar or uvular) frication in
North Argyll, rather than other conceivable interpretations of the
impressionistic descriptions.

We discuss the broader repercussions of these findings regarding the
nature of preaspiration in these varieties. In particular, we find only
very scant evidence of pre-frication after long vowels (in words like
pàpa ‘Pope’, bàta ‘boat’), which contrasts with regular
pre-frication after short vowels. This apparent neutralization of
laryngeal contrast outside the initial foot suggests that (at least
Argyll) Gaelic shows a weakly unconditioned reduction process (lenition;
Honeybone 2012) similar to languages such as English or
Icelandic. Further, if this analysis is correct, it suggests that
preaspiration in North Argyll Gaelic contributes a mora to the stressed
syllable (in parallel to South Argyll Gaelic, and in an echo of Ó Baoill
1980). We argue that the development from preaspiration to a moraic
segment is parallel to that hypothesized by Pétur Helgason (2002) for
Icelandic, and discuss the consequences of this analysis for the
question of internal vs external origin of preaspiration.

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